Asked to imagine what a Wall Street share-dealing room looks like and the layman will describe a testosterone-fuelled bear pit crammed full of alpha males in brightly coloured jackets, frantically shouting out bid and offer prices.
He couldn’t be more wrong. Technological advances mean that stocks are now traded digitally on computer servers in often anonymous – but heavily guarded – buildings, generally miles away from the historic epicentres of finance, meaning the brash men in sharp suits depicted in films such as the The Wolf of Wall Street have been dethroned as the kings of finance.
Computer programmers have taken their crown thanks to the code they churn out, which is able to execute trades thousands of times faster than any human. (more…)